Elinor Dashwood

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**Elinor Dashwood**
Full Name:	Elinor Dashwood
Gender:	Female
Height:	Taller than her sister Marianne, but no measure is given
Age:	19 at beginning of novel
Occupation:	No job
Income:	£200/year
Education:	Home schooled
Rank:	None
Carriage(s) Owned:	None
Family
Spouse:	Edward Ferrars
Parents:	Henry Dashwood and Mrs. Dashwood
Children:	None
Film Adaptations
Portrayed By:	Sense and Sensibility: Emma Thompson

Elinor Dashwood is a fictional character and the main protagonist of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility. She was portrayed by Emma Thompson in the 1995 film adaptation; in a 2007 BBC serial of Sense and Sensibility, Elinor is portrayed by Hattie Morahan.

Elinor is a reserved, practical and thoughtful young woman who, compared with her more emotional and romantic younger sister Marianne, forms the 'sense' of the title. Reduced to near-poverty following the death of her father and the selfishness and greed of her sister-in-law Fanny (whose husband under law inherited their father's entire estate and broke his promise to his dying father to take care of them), she falls in love with Edward Ferrars, Fanny's brother, but because of her reduced circumstances and Edward's prior promises does not allow herself to wish for any union between them.